


Lattice

by juniper_and_lamplight



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Anxiety, Baking, Established Relationship, F/F, Pie, Slice of Life, Thanksgiving, when pie isn't just pie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 17:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16706815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniper_and_lamplight/pseuds/juniper_and_lamplight
Summary: It's hard to reconcile badass Farah Black—rescuer, protector, mage-slayer—withthiswoman, who hums tunelessly as she ties on her grandma's floral apron. Tina can't look away.





	Lattice

**Author's Note:**

> American Thanksgiving is a garbage colonialist holiday, but it's also a holiday with pie, and once I started thinking about Farah baking pies, I couldn't stop. This is the result.

**The day before Thanksgiving**

**7:15pm**

Farah's kitchen is modest, considering that she's a multimillionaire, but the countertops are large enough to accomodate a shocking number of pie-related gadgets, which Tina surveys warily from her perch next to the sink.

There's a rolling pin, pie weights, cutesy-shaped crust cutters, and a pastry wheel—Tina's watched enough episodes of Bake-Off while stoned that she can recognize those. But she's not so sure about the floppy silicone hoop, or the metal device that looks like it belongs in a woodshop/medieval torture dungeon. Her "ooooooh, what's THAT?" query gets only a quirked eyebrow and a "you'll see" from Farah.

It's… _cute_ , honestly, watching Farah set up her prep area and preheat the oven. It's cute and _domestic_. And of course Tina knows that her girlfriend is a complex person, but this is a new layer. It's hard to reconcile badass Farah Black—rescuer, protector, mage-slayer—with _this_ woman, who hums tunelessly as she ties on her grandma's floral apron. Tina can't look away.

**7:31pm**

"Oh, c'mon, it'll be fiiiiine."

Farah closes the oven door and sets the timer for the blind bake on the bottom crust of the pumpkin pie. "I know it'll be fine," she says, "I just wish there was enough room to make them at the guys' place tomorrow. Pie is always better on the first day." Tina rolls her eyes.

It would make more sense to host Thanksgiving here at Farah's, but Amanda is being cagey about whether or not she's bringing the rest of Rowdy 3, and Farah is adamantly opposed to having her home trashed. Dirk and Todd only agreed to host at their place after Farah promised to pay for any damages.

Tina, for her part, is still feeling weird that she's here for Thanksgiving at all. She’s never really done the whole “stable adult relationship” thing before, the awkward-exciting meshing together of lives, and so she hadn’t been sure if they were supposed to spend holidays together or not. But then Farah had started talking about the agency's first Thanksgiving dinner like Tina’s presence was a foregone conclusion, and now here she is: learning more about pie than she ever expected, even though she'd been tasked with bringing the mac and cheese. (For a hot second, she'd considered making the mac and cheese from scratch, but after looking at recipes that included words such as "bechamel" and "roux," she'd simply combined several packages of the "homestyle" supermarket stuff in a disposable casserole pan and called it a day.) 

Farah takes another parcel of pie dough out of the fridge and drops it next to Tina on the counter. "If you're going to loiter in the kitchen, you may as well help. Can you grab that box of crust cutters?" 

**7:50pm**

It turns out that cutting teensy shapes out of pie dough is a fussy, tedious task. Why did Farah trust _her_ with this job?

**8:01pm**

"Hey!" Farah pokes Tina with the end of the rolling pin. "That's to eat with the pie." 

Unrepentant, Tina clutches the bowl of whipped cream and scoops a fingerful into her mouth. "What? I finished your dang tiny pie-dough shapes. This is my reward!"

Farah moves in to kiss a dab of whipped cream from the side of her mouth, then the steals back the bowl while Tina's distracted. _Cheater_.

**8:32pm**

Apparently the torture device is an apple corer/peeler/slicer, and watching Farah use it is both hot and terrifying.

**9:09pm**

"Tinaaaa?"

She bounds into the kitchen from the living room, where she'd wandered off to toggle between football and a Harry Potter marathon on the TV. "Yeah, hi, what's up, what we are doing?"

The corners of Farah's mouth curl upwards. "Can you make me an egg wash?" 

"Yeeeeah, yeah, I got you! Quick question though: a what now?"

Farah hands her a ramekin with a single brown egg in it. "Separate the egg, then lightly whisk the white with a splash of water."

"Roger that." 

She tries to be stealthy as she Googles " _separate an egg???"_

 

**9:20pm**

"Taste this." The kitchen is warmer now, with the beautifully decorated pumpkin pie deposited in the fridge, another egg-washed crust blind baking, and a pot of fruit filling simmering on the stovetop. Tina obediently eats the spoonful of apple-pear-cranberry filling. "Isssh guh!", she proclaims around the mouthful of hot fruit, adding a thumbs-up for emphasis.

"How good, though? Thanksgiving dinner good? You're sure it's not too tart?" The familiar tone of anxiety, absent for the last couple of hours, is creeping back into Farah's voice.

Tina swallows. "It's not _supposed_ to be tart?" 

Farah huffs and turns away, shoulders tight, to stir more sugar into the mixture. 

**9:31pm**

Watching Farah's deft, nervous fingers as they weave a lattice crust, Tina can't help but think about all of the _other_ things those fingers can do. ( _Damn_ , it's warm in here.) She's so mesmerized that it's jarring when the dough strands begin snarling and clinging together, sticky from the heat of the kitchen. Farah begins talking under her breath, but Tina can't tell if she's self-soothing or self-berating. 

"Do you, uh, need more flour?" Tina scoops up a handful, ready to sprinkle it on the dough.

"Nope! Nope, all good here." Farah's response is too chirpy to be sincere. When she flips the completed lattice on top of the pie, it lands off-center.

**10:29pm**

"This is a disaster. Just… a complete disaster. I can't feed this to people!"

Okay, sure, the fruit filling on the apple-pear-cranberry pie has bubbled over the crooked lattice top in some places, and the edges of the crust are over-browned despite the silicone pie shield, but Tina wouldn't call it a _disaster_. "Of course you can feed it to people! Especially _these_ people. I'm not sure the Rowdies even understand utensils, and I've seen Dirk and Todd eat two-week-old Chinese food from the fridge." (She'd eaten it right along with them, but that's not relevant now.) 

Farah narrows her eyes. "So this pie is as bad as two-week-old Chinese food?"

"No!" _Shit_. "This pie? This pie is amazing, and it smells un-fucking-believable, and… Seriously, all I mean is, like… these are your _friends_. You don't have to make everything all picture-perfect for them."

"So it _is_ a disaster. I knew it." _Good job with the pep talk, Tevetino._ Farah pokes at the doughy mess on the counter. "And this cheddar crust didn't come together right, I can't even roll it out without it falling apart! But I don't have ingredients to make another, and it's already getting late, and why is eight HUNDRED degrees in this kitchen?" She shoves the kitchen window open with more force than seems necessary. "Why did I say I would bring _three_? What was I thinking?"

Farah's wild-eyed now, and starting to hyperventilate, and Tina responds instinctually. "Jesus, Farah, breathe. It's just pie!"

The moment the words are out, she knows they're wrong. She doesn't need to be an empath to notice Farah's flinch, to understand what it means. This _isn't_ just pie—it's family lost and found, traditions broken and remade. It's love, wrapped up in half-burnt pastry and filled with too-tart, too-bubbly fruit.

Farah's expression turns stony as Tina struggles to get her foot out of her mouth. "Whoa, hey, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"

"No." Farah cuts her off and turns back to the counter. "Just—just go, Tina. You're not helping, so just get out of the way."

Tina's heard variations on those words from a lot people over the years. She's a goddamned pro at letting shit roll off her back. And she's pretty sure that Farah only wants her out of the kitchen, not out of her life. Nonetheless, she feels a sting as she heads out into the November night, and it's not just from the cold. 

**10:47pm**

It's spitting rain outside, and Tina wishes she'd had the foresight to wear something warmer than an old hoodie, because she's already shivering and she's only been walking for a few blocks. She thinks longingly of her warm uniform coat, and of home. She typically spends Thanksgiving with Hobbs' family, who treat her with bemused tolerance, and then she goes back to Hobbs' place to watch corny Christmas movies and do old-person jigsaw puzzles until Hobbs falls asleep and she leaves to get blackout drunk at the only open bar in Bergsberg…and actually, never mind. This year is definitely an improvement, pie-exile and all.

She flips up her hood and pulls the drawstring tight.

**11:52pm**

When she finally returns (after what she hopes is enough time for an apple-cheddar pie to bake), she avoids the kitchen and makes a beeline for the shower. The hot water prickles on her chilled skin, and she stays under the spray until she can't stand it anymore. When she walks into to the bedroom, still towelling her hair, she finds a bathrobe and a plate of cinnamon-sugar-dusted pie crust pieces waiting on the bed.

The bathrobe is cozy, and the apology is buttery and flaky in her mouth. 

**Thanksgiving Day**

**12:16am**

She only half-wakes when Farah climbs into the bed with a rush of apple-scented air. Unconsciously, she shifts onto her back so that Farah can lie on her good shoulder and curl up against her body. Farah's hand slides up to rest over Tina's heart, and Tina covers it with her own hand, weaving their fingers together. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is the first piece of fiction I've finished in over a decade, and I'm hoping that posting it will motivate me to also finish the muuuuuch longer Farah/Tina fic I've been working on for months. Please let me know if you liked this, and/or find me on tumblr ([@juniper-and-lamplight](https://juniper-and-lamplight.tumblr.com/)) for further Farah/Tina feelings and general DGHDA love.


End file.
